Experts are currently divided on whether historians will refer to this as the "Stand On His Head Bowl" or the "Pepsi's Marketing Got A Clue For Once In Their Sad, Miserable Lives And Shut Up And Let Coca-Cola Shoot Themselves In The Foot Bowl".



Meanwhile Animal Planet has upped the silliness and species on their Puppy Bowl. Good clean fun for the entire family, that.

Been seeing a lot of ex-Rams' names on NFL broadcasts the past two or three weeks.


Um, I really don't think the Vikings taking on the one-win Lions counts as a "showdown", even if they do share the same division.

Been learning Python this past week or so, for purposes of one of my a big fat project. It's going rather well, or so I tell myself at least.

We'll probably be leaving for Grandma's this Tuesday. We'll return . . . um, at some point.



Amusing, nicely readable article from the Post-Dispatch today, about an early Mizzou game:

Northwestern vs. Mizzou: First meeting of teams was a real whizbanger
By Vahe Gregorian
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
12/21/2008

As of Sept. 1, 1895, Mizzou's endeavor with "foot ball" seemed destined to be canceled in its sixth season, with its future a matter of conjecture.

Even after the erection that fall of grandstands capable of holding 850 people around the regraded Rollins Field, the game in its embryonic stages was of meager enticement to MU students.

What was supposed to be the "Missouri eleven" consisted of ... three players.

"Tried men, good and true, but not numerous enough," The Savitar school yearbook later would put it. "Furthermore, there was no coach, no manager, no schedule, (and) a great deal of gloom and uncertainty."

But in the days to come, the school hired as its fifth head coach C.D. Bliss, nicknamed "Pop," perhaps because he had graduated all of two years earlier from Yale or because he forbade the use of tobacco and liquor among players.

( These journalists hadn't even graduated yet. )

Pants confuse me.



A man came in Wednesday and photographed a few of us for an upcoming article about the litmag. Me, Sh., M., and a couple of others. I think it's supposed to be for the campus newsletter periodical thingy, not for the student paper. He'll be back on Monday. He would've been here this past Monday but R./B. couldn't come by due to nasty flu, so that session was scotched.



You know, it's not hard to make a proper family comedy. Just have the people act silly and the children will probably laugh, or at least feel puzzled (which is halfway there if it's the right kind of puzzled). They don't have to understand all the subtleties. Say a guy's standing at the guardrail of a cruise liner, talking with his wife: "I can't believe you talked me into going out on the ocean like this. I can't even swim." And then another guy comes along, toting a Walkman that's blaring weird music. The first man hears him coming, turns around and sees him coming, and screams "AHHH! DISCO!" and jumps overboard in an amusing manner while the second man walks by obliviously. See? Silly! And all it takes is a bit of acting talent on the part of the first man (for the children) and a director who knows where to find the worst disco music (for the adults). Sure, a few children will ask "Mommy, why did that man jump into the water if he can't swim?" The parents can tell them "Disco music was popular a few decades back, but nowadays a lot of people think it was a horrible idea and find it very painful to hear and that man was apparently one of them" or something to that effect. Easy.



Are European snowflakes ten-sided?



I think I'll write to my Congressmen and urge them to introduce a bill. This particular bill would require anyone who has a one-syllable name that either begins with a "ffff" sound or rhymes with "meld" and who plays for the NFL franchise in Pittsburgh to have "Red-Hot" as a nickname. Posterity demands it.



I have updated my LJ sidebar and profile. Whee!



Why would I want to make my zipcode my homepage??? That'd be totally stupid.



Speaking of which, I saw an ad the other day. 'Finally, a luxury car that treats life as the biggest luxury of all.' CLASSIC!!! I gotta go back and try to snag a screenshot of that. Silly Volvo.

Edit: Got it! Because it's 155 x 507, I'll put it under a cut so I don't crowd out the others on your Friends list . . .
( Bwahaha! )

BWA HA HA HA HA.

Roger Clemens just said "I'll be there for my country. Will you be there for yours?" or something like that. Yeah, that's good to know, Roger "Gunboat Diplomacy" Clemens. How many nations do you plan on getting the U.S. into a beanball war with, hmm?





Seattle seems to have developed an obsession with shooting themselves in the foot every chance they get. Every time they get a huge play it seems to get called back on a penalty.





Pepsi actually gets minor points for the Mist ad and for having Jackie Chan. The rest that I've seen is bleh at best, urk at worst.

...Oh, wow. That's improvement to the point that it's time for celebration.

Congratulations, Pepsi! You've GRADUATED to being the Arizona Cardinals of the advertising world!!







I still say ESPN plays that minimalist MNF commercial just to rub it in ABC's face. The only points of interest to it are the MNF (?) music blaring and the gridiron lines keeping time with their joyful bouncing as if pleased to get away from ABC and onto . . . (as we finally get to the logo) . . . ESPN.





So I looked out of the window after we got home from church and wow was that a big bird near the backyard feeder. Wait, that's a hawk. And it's got a pigeon wing frantically sticking out from under it which means the rest of the pigeon is probably under there somewhere. While my sympathies were with the hawk against the pigeon, that sure was a pathetic-looking wing so all I could think of to say was "No fair!" which got Mom's attention. So she sicced Penny out the door on them and the hawk immediately took off. The pigeon, which I expected would wobble around at best, also promptly made for the clouds perpendicular to the hawk's direction, leaving a number of feathers behind for Penny to sniff at. Apparently hawks may like to play with their food too.

It's been wet around here lately, all right. Even mushy in places right now. Fortunately the temperatures and windchills are behaving themselves for now. *knocks on wood*

Penny had to be operated on about two days back because, apparently, two glands got swollen and were about ready to burst x_X. Fortunately she's feeling much better now, though she probably still has no patience for people messing around near her tail. We'll be taking her back to the vet this afternoon for follow-up.

College doesn't start up again until next week, but I'll be going back starting tomorrow or Wednesday probably to begin work again and to attend to...other matters.


(By the way, did I miss something or are you now allowed to grab and throw around anybody on the other team regardless of who has the ball? And when did it become such a delicate matter to actually reach out and tackle someone?)